• Published 15th Sep 2015
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The Djinni's Tale - Snake Staff



An explorer finds an ancient lamp inside a ruined tomb. What secrets does it hold?

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Chapter 6

“So,” said the stranger, a good while later. “Where are we now?”

Across the horizon, as far as the eye could see, stretched a vast, shimmering wonderland. The sun’s bright light was reflected, refracted, magnified, and split in so many different ways that a pony not wearing special lenses could easily lose sight just looking out over it. Waves, from those no higher than a pony’s knee to towering behemoths the size of ten-story buildings, were everywhere. All were pointed in a similar direction, forming a tiny part of a great circle expanding outwards in all direction. They were also all immobile, being entirely made of shimmering, semi-transparent crystal.

“This is the Sea of Glass, among those who know of it,” said Djinni, standing beside him atop the great peak of one of the waves. The tallest for miles, it offered an excellent viewpoint. “This place used to be a barren desert, many eons ago. An exiled alchemist took up residence in the epicenter, constructing a great tower from the stones and sand by dint of his art. He hoped to prove to his former kingdom and his compatriots how wrong they had been to banish him. Instead, he wound up demonstrating exactly why that was a good idea.”

The stallion winced, tugging on his hat a little. “So he basically managed to blow up an entire desert?”

“Essentially, yes. The way his reagents reacted with the sand caused it to flow like an ocean for the brief moment before it all turned to glass.” She tapped the substance with a hoof. “Crystals harvested from here still have useful applications in alchemy. So, in a way, he wound up contributing to his art after all.”

“I doubt he saw it like that.”

“Probably not,” she admitted. “Then again, he didn’t exactly get a chance to witness the fallout.”

“Mhm…” The stranger nodded, then looked out over the vast crystalline structure.

It was beautiful, like many of the things he had seen. Each wave looked as though it had been painstakingly hoof-crafted by a master artisan over the course of years. There was not the tiniest flaw or scratch on the wave they stood on, nor on any other that he could see, an undeniable sign of the crystal's magical nature. The beauty of the scenery was further accentuated by the perfect smoothness of it all, the way one wave flowed into another and blended seamlessly. The multitude of rainbows stretching across this bizarre place. Even the stillness of it was soothing in a way, like time itself was frozen here and one could stare out at it all for a century and not age a single day.

“Hey,” he said, after a minute of silent observation. “Djinni?”

“Master?” She looked at him.

“Bet you that I can get to the top of that wave first.” He pointed a glass structure nearly fifty feet high. “If you don’t break out those wings or your magic.”

She looked down at where he pointed, then grinned. “You’re on!”

The two of them appeared at the base of that wave at her merest word.

“On your marks…” the stranger said. “Get set…” both assumed a racing position. “Go!”

Djinni went right for the wave. With her longer legs she easily got to it first, and began to scale. She managed almost fifteen feet before the angle shifted and she began to lose traction, Gripping flawless glass is ordinarily difficult enough, doing it with blunt hooves is next to impossible. She began to slip, then very quickly fell back down to land on her backside. Being very resilient, she got immediately back up and tried the climb again from a different angle. This time she only made it eight feet or so before she lost her balance. The third try took her up around eighteen feet, the fourth perhaps twenty-two. After sliding back down for the fifth time, she heard the sound of faint laughter.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, rounding on the stranger. “I may not have succeeded yet, but you haven’t even tried! I thought this was going to be a race!”

“Oh, it is,” he replied. “I just wanted to scope out the competition first.”

“Oh?” she snorted. “You try it then, oh glorious Master.”

He grinned and gave a mock bow. “Your wish is my command.”

“Oh ha ha…” Djinni rolled her eyes.

The stranger sauntered casually up to the wave of crystal, sized the thing up with a good look or two, and… seized his own boots in telekinesis. He rose easily, like an elevator, perfectly balanced from long experience.

“You cheat!” The spirit pointed up at him, as he reached the top without delay. “You said no magic!”

“No,” he replied, giving her a roguish grin. “I said none of your magic! I didn’t say anything about mine! And here I was worried that the ancient and all-powerful sun spirit would notice my little loophole,” he tipped his hat downward at her and chuckled. “You need to up your game, little lady.”

“You know you’ll regret that, right, oh master mine?” she answered with a grin of her own.

“In your dreams, maybe!” The stranger walked away, laughing.

She was cute when she was flustered.


“Are you s-sure this is a good idea?” The stranger swallowed, backing up a step.

“Oh, don’t be such a foal, Master,” Djinni said. “It’s only a little drop.”

To be more accurate, it was, to the stranger’s best estimate, a drop of a minimum nineteen hundred feet. A drop to be made inside a waterfall. The two stood on the edge of a vast green island floating peacefully above the ground. High above the ground. Insanely, lethally high above the ground. It did not, to the best of Djinni’s knowledge, have a name, for no one had discovered it before.

The stranger felt like “Hell” might be a good one.

By chance or fate, the magicks of earth and sky possessed mutual, overlapping nexuses on this exact location that made the entire bizarre thing possible. Further, tunnels in the earth buried right through parts of the nexus, imbuing whatever came through them with a small portion of supernatural energy, permitting them to bend the laws of physics. In this case, water poured down from a vast lake atop the island into a gaping maw below. Djinni claimed up and down that the water then whipped through the underground tunnels until it reached another key point, which caused it to shoot back up into the air so high that immediately rained back down on the other side of the island, keeping the lake continuously full to bursting. A natural perpetual motion machine.

Djinni had, naturally, decided that properly granting his wish would entail a ride through the tunnels below.

“How else can I say that I showed you this wonder as you wished it, Master?” she had said with an innocent smile on her face.

The stranger was not a pony who ordinarily suffered from acrophobia or aquaphobia. Sure, he was not as fond of heights as a pegasus or as enamored of the water as a hippocampus, but he could reasonably say that he feared neither. Now, though… the prospect of free-falling hundreds of feet while being deluged, sent through the universe’s most deranged water slide, and then shot back all that way up to splash down into a lake was less than appealing. That the water was also rather chilly only made the idea seem more unpleasant.

“You know,” he said to the sun spirit, who was holding them both at the very edge of the waterfall. “I think we can consider this part of the wish adequately granted, don’t you? I’ve seen what I needed to see, and I think it would be perfectly delightful to move on to the next place right about now,” he grinned, flashing his pearly white teeth.

Djinni rolled her eyes, put a gentle hoof on his back, and shoved him off the edge.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Master.”

The stallion let out a wild shriek as he plummeted like a rock. The water beat down on his back, soaking him to the bone. Simultaneously the wind whipped up against him, ripping his precious hat from his head and blasting his lips apart to display the teeth within. He fell and fell and fell and fell, watching with utter horror as the conical maw in the ground grew closer and closer with each passing second.

At the last second of his freefall the stranger caught a slight glimpse back upwards. A bright white and yellow figure made its own plunge over the edge. Somehow, his ears could just make out the sound she was making.

“WHEEEEEE!”

The stranger hit rock but didn’t stop moving even for an instant. The weight of the water drove him downwards into the tube-shaped tunnel at ridiculous speeds. The fall didn’t hurt, and he had no problems breathing, but all the same adrenaline raced through his system, and his heart pounded at high speeds. He shot through the dark, rocky tube faster than a bullet, completely encased in the torrent. All was black rock save for the occasional deep green crystals that provided a faint illumination as the water carried him.

The world’s most demented water ride continued for… it must have been at least a minute. Maybe two. The stranger felt himself being pushed uphill and downhill, spun around in swirling spirals, endured two additional freefalls underground, and once could have sworn he even went through a loop-de-loop the size of a small mountain. He was proud to say that he only screamed like he was about to die around half of the time, somehow never getting a mouthful of water through all of it.

Up ahead he had half a second to spy a speck, before he was promptly thrown from a third underground waterfall. This time he slid down the sides of another conical vent towards what appeared to be the world’s biggest geyser stuck on permanent eruption. The high-pressure fountain of water caught him easily, and he got the opportunity to scream once more as it shot him and multiple tons of glittering mountain water hundreds of feet into the air. The journey upwards was slower by far than the one down from the island, giving him plenty of time to take in the scenery and all the sharp rocks waiting below.

The waterspout eventually curved downwards in a picture-perfect arc, treating the soaked stallion to one final fall from a good hundred feet up. He crashed into the lake at speeds high enough to snap bones like twigs under ordinary circumstances. A torrent of the cold, clear water poured down atop his head, pushing him under and outwards. The stranger thanked the Creator he was a strong swimmer as he paddled for the nearest beach. He managed to haul himself onto the beach, shivering and muttering unmentionable things about spirits and the nature of their mothers.

Very soon the stranger heard a familiar voice, whooping and giggling like a lunatic. He watched Djinni herself take the final plunge into the island’s lake, before turning away to focus on limping onto the warm, dry grass to sunbathe.

“What in all creation was that?!” he demanded from his back when he heard someone climbing out of the water.

“Why, whatever do you mean, Master?” Her tone of innocent naiveté was so perfect that a less experienced stallion would have surrendered to it on the spot. “I sought only to give my master the fullness of the experience that he wished for. How could I call myself a proper servant if I neglected such a vital part of this wonder?”

The stranger sat up a little, groaning. Then he stopped, put a hoof to his mouth, and barely managed to keep from bursting into laughter.

“I didn’t know you were going for a new look,” he said.

“Huh?” Djinni blinked, before idly sauntering up to the water to look at herself.

Her scream almost shook the island.

Cheeks flush, the sun spirit shut her eyes. A second later, steam burst from all over her body as she reignited her extinguished tail and mane. They noticeably contained a touch of red amidst the gold and orange.

“Now then,” he said, as she walked back towards him with her best dignified air. “My hat.”

“Hat, Master?” She batted her eyes innocently. “What hat?”

“You know damn well what hat. The hat that fell off when you decided to shove me off a cliff!

She batted her eyes again and smiled sweetly, flaring her wings upwards. The sun behind her head gave the impression of a halo. Some might have mistaken her for an angel.

“Give me my hat back, woman!”

Something wet and heavy dropped directly onto his face.

“Master’s every wish is my command,” she said, with just a slight giggle.

The stranger groaned.


“You could have, you know, warned me!” the stranger shouted, as he galloped as fast as his hooves could take him.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Djinni, who ran beside him, snapped back.

The two galloped along the floor of a city-sized underground cavern. The whole place was craggy black stone from end to end, save for the violet crystals of varying sizes that rose from the ground at regular intervals. High above on the cavern’s roof was the largest of these crystals, almost a mile in diameter. It cast its light in the manner of a miniature sun, illuminating the towering, cyclopean constructions of roughly carved black stone jutting hundreds of feet into the air. Between them were vaguely flattened sections of terrain faintly resembling roads, which twisted and branched in all directions seemingly without rhyme or reason. The Dead City of Pazulti, Djinni had called it.

It was not as dead as they had hoped.

“I mean,” the spirit continued, seemingly not bothered by the task of running and yelling simultaneously. “Last time I was here, it was a perfectly serviceable ancient ruin! How could I have known that it had picked up infestations of umbrum and undead in the millennia since?! And besides...” She leaped over a fallen chunk of building in a single bound. “You were the one who insisted on poking around in abandoned buildings!”

“Well, yeah!” he shouted back. “It’s kind of what I do! You know, explore things, bring back treasures, and write it all down, that sort of thing! We've been doing this for years! What did you expect I would do?!”

Whatever retort the sun spirit might have made was preemptively drowned out by the sound of a horrible wail no living throat could produce. The sound cracked several of the violet crystals, dislodged at least one chunk of masonry, and made the stranger’s ear’s bleed.

Behind the two fleeing, arguing figures came the hordes of hell. Dead bodies of many species, some that had long since passed from living memory, ran, scuttled, floated, soared, or crawled along Pazulti’s ancient roads, screaming bloody murder. Some were dry and desiccated, others half rotten with worms crawling between gaps in their skin. Still others looked as though they had died yesterday, which they quite possibly had.

Racing alongside the more numerous dead were half-formed shapes of inky blackness. Some had the likeness of ponies, others of minotaurs or horses or griffons or even more exotic species. All trailed shadow, whether a trace from their tails all the way to being little more than a head on a whispy black cloud. Other living shadows didn’t even bother with mortal form, soaring through the air as shafts of midnight black with alien mouths coming out the end.

“What possessed you that you would poke at red and black crystals?!” Djinni yelled. “They were red and black, for Creator’s sake! You know that means bad things!”

“Because you told me it was safe!” he shouted back at her. “I tend to take your recommendations on this sort of thing!”

“I told you that I thought the city was safe! Not that you should go prod at everything shiny that catches your mortal eye!”

The stranger pivoted quickly to dodge a bolt of green flame.

“I don’t think you understand what the word safe means, do you?!” he barked.

“It doesn’t mean do stupid things while I’m a room over!”

Both pony and spirit had to take a brief break from their argument as a massive hand burst forth from the ground in front of them. Five-fingered and formed roughly from the ubiquitous black stone, it had a decent covering of the red-black crystals the umbrum had emerged from. The two bolted around it while another hand burst out a good distance away. A vaguely humanoid figure easily ten stories tall ripped itself from the earth. Almost three dozen massive red and black crystals grew from its hide. Shadows flickered across its “skin”, filling in gaps in the stone. Besides that, its only distinguishable feature was a pair of pupil-less green orbs trailing dark purple wisps right around where its eyes should have been.

This is your fault!” the two roared at each other as they ran.

The two might well have continued arguing like an old married couple for some time, but for the creature. At that exact moment the towering giant raised both titanic fists and pounded the ground. Instantly shockwaves raced out in all directions, with such power as to throw living, spirit, and undead alike off their hooves and hurl them all to the floor. The earthquake continued to spread, toppling structures that had stood for eons in seconds. Heedless of this, the giant strode forward, eating up ground towards the sprawled duo at a rapid pace.

“You know,” the stranger said from where he had fallen, blood trickling down his cheek. “I think that I find this part of the wish to be well and duly granted to my utter satisfaction. Perhaps it is time we vacate the premises.”

Djinni took one look at the monstrosity crashing its way towards them and nodded her head.

“I quite agree,” she said.

And they were gone.


“Well,” he said, many, many years later. “That’s it for this round.”

The stranger wiped the sweat off of his brow and set his quill aside before collapsing back into his chair. He felt he did that far too often these days, but at his age one really had to. At least it was comfortable.

“It is?” came the voice he knew so intimately. “You are finished?”

“I am,” he said. “My journal, volume three hundred and seventy-two, is now officially complete.”

Djinni sat across the room from him. While he had been working on properly recording the latest batch of their adventures, she had simply lounged on a sofa and read a book while sipping delicately at some herbal tea. He would occasionally call on her to supply a detail – while his mind was mostly undimmed by his twilight years, she was utterly untouched by time, as beautiful as the day they had met. This arrangement made her memory available whenever he needed it.

“Oh…” Djinni sat down her book and tea, and then sighed.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Yes…” She hesitated.

“Well, go on, spit it out,” he told her. “I’m not getting any younger here!”

She smiled weakly. “I’m… I’m afraid that’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“I have shown you each and every wonder that I know of, from least to greatest. Your second wish…” She bowed her head a little. “Is now granted, Master.”

The stranger slumped back in his chair, unsure of what exactly he was feeling. Shock obviously. He had been doing this for the greater bulk of his life now, in spite of his family's disapproval. The adventures and exploration were as much a part of him as anything else. It felt hard to believe that it could, at last, be over. Regret, too. Though it had been decades in the making, looking back at that moment it still felt so short a length of time. He remembered a dozen different times he could have taken it more seriously, squeezed more out of it. Finally a great question loomed: what was he to do now?

Seconds went by in silence as he pondered this. Seconds became minutes. Minutes became hours. The mortal and the spirit sat in deep silence, brooding on what both knew must eventually come, but neither had wanted.

It was, in the end, Djinni who spoke up first.

“…Master?” she prodded.

“Hmmm?” The stranger looked up from the book he’d been staring at.

“You still have one wish left, my master,” she reminded him. “Do you have any… ideas?”

Actually, come to think of it he did have one. He’d had the idea for years, but there had always been preoccupations, distractions, delays. And a tinge of fear as well. But, the more he thought of it now the more appropriate it seemed. His long-running wish was over and done with. And if she got angry, even after all this? Well, he was ninety-three and had a birthday in a few weeks. He wasn’t exactly going to live much longer either way. Might as well settle the matter here and now.

“Djinni?” he said slowly, trying to overcome years of ingrained aversion to the topic.

“Yes?”

“I had a question.”

She smiled. “You know that you may ask me anything, Master.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” She nodded.

“You’ll… keep your head? No going full solar power on my study? Or me?”

“After all this time, what could you possibly ask me that would make me do that?”

“I…” he paused, clearing his throat and summoning his fortitude.

“Go on,” she prodded gently. “I promise I will answer.”

He raised his head and looked her directly in the eye. “Tell me why you can’t be free.”

Time seemed to run in slow motion. Djinni’s eyes went wide, her mouth curled downwards. The flames on her head and tail blazed higher. Faint hints of red could be seen within. The temperature, at least to the stranger’s perception, seemed to rise. Sweat rolled down the back of his neck. He licked his suddenly dry lips. But he matched her gaze, one for one. The staring contest – the battle of wills, really – went on and on and on for no one quite knew how long.

But, eventually, Djinni slowly lowered her eyes, and then her head. The streaks of red faded from her mane, cool air rushed back into the room. The silence continued for several more seconds as she mentally submitted to his will.

“As you wish, Master,” she said, raising her head up again. “I shall tell you. After all this time… after all we have done together… you have earned the right to know.”

The stranger sat back in his chair, ears up high and twitching slightly.

“The reason I cannot be free, Master...” She sighed. “Is because my freedom means my utter annihilation.”